Real Gardening in my Real Garden

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We are firmly on the down hill run to spring and the final weeks of winter are imminent. Ordinarily this fills me with excitement and a large portion of my being is jumping with joy. The rest of me really wants to apply some kind of seasonal hand brake. There is still too much to be done. I have my lists and a loose sense of order but my thoughts lately are lingering on the orchard.

Boxthorn – it’s a bit of a brute

Winter is the best time to plant trees and if I want to get back to the point I was in the old garden I really need to get them in this season. I have been mulling over a long list of things I want. The length of the list surprised me, as it is pretty much what we had before. But a couple of trees here and there over ten winters can be almost imperceptible growth. This time I want to be more strategic. I want to plan the fruiting season so there is almost always something in harvest to minimise the glut. I want to select fruit because of their qualities, not based on availability at the garden centre closest to me and purchased on a whim while there for compost!

Strangely the chickens like to bask beneath the boxthorn. Other birds like to shelter in there too, so I may need to replace it with something less invasive but just as bird friendly.

I still have time to carefully consider this, however there is a bit of a problem in the spot I want to plant them and so I need to address this sooner rather than later so when the time comes to planting things it will go smoothly. There are several large thickets of Boxthorn. Gosh I hate the stuff. You only need to stand on one of those thorns to know all about it. It hurts for a long time.

The Tree and Shrub Lopper StarCut 160 plus is perfect for this job – to save me from getting up close and personal with those thorns.

The early farmers thought it would be a good idea to bring these babies over from South Africa to make a good hedge to keep those colonial cows contained in fields. Unfortunately, the plant likes it here too much and has taken over, especially in coastal areas. I think we will have a long-term relationship with it to get rid of it, but the best way is to chop it back and then dig it out. That sounds like loads of fun.

I’ll have the soon to be orchard cleared in no time.

The good people at Gardena couldn’t have better timing when they asked if I could give their Lopper StarCut a go. In years to come, it will be a pleasure to prune wayward fruit trees but for now it is this is the perfect tool for this job. I don’t mind a tedious, mind numbing chore in the garden. Weeding really doesn’t bother me, so, as long as I am well protected with thick gloves and a telescopic lopper then I think I am prepared to tackle the boxthorn in my soon to be orchard. If I keep in mind the taste of a crisp apple or the juiciness of a sun warmed peach, I should be able to get through it in no time at all. Then we will have a big bonfire and celebrate the efforts with toasted marshmallows and mulled wine.

Right tool for the job – this even has a handy hook for dragging the trimmings away because I’m not going anywhere near those spikes.

Wish me luck… I’m going in.

I am no longer daunted by this nasty plant – Be afraid Mr Boxthorn, I’m coming after you!

Come again soon – hopefully I won’t look like I’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards, bleeding from the cuts of a thousand thorns.

While we were away, I did do a lot of thinking about what needs to be done to get the garden ready for the spring. I have a fixed vision in my head of how I want it to be and it is shaping up nicely. But things were also happening behind the scenes. I’m not all that great with my spatial awareness as shown by when I needed to do a quick readjustment to my plans once I was able to fully assess the space in person. But that was easily sorted.

Before we left the garden was surrounded by piles of mounded up earth from the first bulldozer push

Not so easily sorted was where I had asked for the 6 loads of good earth from up near Froggies to be put. How was I to know it would be in the way? It seemed like it was tucked up away in a corner. Only once the bulldozer began levelling the garden that the problem became apparent and I could only build half the garden. There just wasn’t enough manoeuvre room in the far end to sort it all out in one go.

On our return the mounds were gone and the the garden area is flat and space has been created for my shed and my office.

So, while I was away the bulldozer got back to work – with help of a tractor with a scoop and the soil was moved to a more sensible place and the rest of the garden was levelled out enough for me to continue with the building of the beds. It was lovely to come home to some progress that occurred in my absence. They even managed to roughly fill most of the beds already constructed.

The soil mound is now in a better place, at least I hope it is. All going well it won’t be there for long as the beds find themselves full of soil goodness.

The garden is now segmented into various stages – some excitingly require the planting of plants and sowing of seeds, others in hard construction and the rest require extracting from my head and into reality.

The best way forward from this point is to write some lists and if I put them here then there is a degree of public accountability to keep me on track. Having said that the motivation to get the garden ready for the spring doesn’t need much of a push. Especially if I’m to be planting out tomatoes in 13 weeks.

I was hoping fairies would come while I was away and fill my beds and it seemed my wish came true.

First list: Building rest of the beds

Paint the brackets with an anti-rust paint on the edges so they don’t rust in our salty air.

Check how much wood I have left – I suspect someone (possibly me) transposed the numbers when making the order and at a glance it looks like I have an excess of 1m lengths and significant lack of 2m lengths. Possibly order more.

Assemble the beds

Fill the beds.

A simple list.

The garlic I planted on the day after the shortest day has made a dramatic arrival while we were away.

Next list: The existing beds.

Continue levelling them so they line up and look pretty.

Enrich the beds with compost, blood and bone, and some Dynamic Lifter. This should allow the nutrients to incorporate with the new soil and form some kind of microbial community and soil structure long before needed.

Except in the beds that need onions and asparagus planting in them sooner rather than later. Plant asparagus and onion seedlings.

All beds – already and soon-to-be constructed need irrigation. This is always easier to do before planting but some plants are already in situ, but it will be fine.

Speaking of irrigation, I need to sort out a water tank for the garden so I don’t ‘accidently’ drain the house dry. All our water needs are met by the heavens above.

I need to find and order a load of bark for between the beds.

The strawberries can barely contain their excitement at getting a new home. They don’t seem to be able to wait.

Another list:

I need to finalise my under glass growing solution – it is in progress and close to being assembled, but I really want to do a grand reveal for this one so I’ll keep you guessing. But all I can say is it is under control and I’m super excited.

Sort out the seeds and get things started so there will be things to plant when the time is right.

I need a shed… and an office to write from. This is on another master list awaiting a next stage fiscal injection. It’s like they don’t trust you when building – or maybe they like to keep you on edge… I have chosen the ones I want and can already see myself working in them.

Fruit cage. This is more pressing – I have strawberries and raspberries that have been languishing in pots for about a year now. I’m surprised I haven’t killed them. This fact alone makes them deserving of a grand home where they won’t be harried by birds stealing their fruit. I can see it in my head but haven’t managed to clarify the details as yet.

Plant an orchard. I want to fill the place with fruit trees, but I need to choose, source and acquire them with haste as there is only 4 – 5 weeks remaining as the ideal time to plant trees for this season. I had over thirty trees in my old orchard and find the new wish list has not been compromised in any way. Holes need to be dug!

Once the whole thing is created I want to wrap a rabbit, chicken and deer proof fence around the lot with some kind of barrier to prevent the encroachment of the kikuyu grass that thrives in this spot.

Compost heap – I’m going to need one of these too – a lovely three bin one.

Another arrival while we were away was this delightful little chicken that The Joeyosaurus must raise and care for, for a school project. She has been lovingly named Turducken and is a huge distraction.

I think that’s it. There are probably lists within the lists and things I haven’t thought of but I’m on the right track and full of enthusiasm.

After all of the dramatic events of the last nine months – making the decision to move, preparing the house to sell, not to mention the extremely stressful sale process. That is the only thing you can’t control and stands firmly between you and your dreams. Then making the move to the new place, with the festive season smack bang in the middle of the packing up the worldly possessions stage, added to the intensity of the times we were in. Add to this – not just moving house but moving a house, which was then ravaged by a great storm before being settled firmly on its foundations. Exciting times. During this experience our family was drawn closer together with 100 days living in a caravan – 40 of which had no internet. The upside was it was summer, so it was like a strange camping trip.

On a gorgeous midwinter day, it was difficult to tear ourselves away, even if our destination was wonderfully exotic.

Now we are in the house, the garden is being built and on track to be ready for the new growing season it seemed like the ideal time to take a well-earned mid-winter break. For 12 magnificent days we basked in the warmth of the incredible Tahitian sun. I was completely off the clock and focused on relaxing and restoration, so I could approach the new growing season with gusto upon our return. But I can share with you a few images I captured from this beautiful place.

You can’t get more tropical than a coconut palm in the sunset

I even got some snorkeling in. The coral and the fish were pretty cool.

These starfish don’t look real – such a beautiful blue.

Experience showed us this wasn’t just a quaint sign for the amusement of tourists as a coconut came crashing down, narrowly missing a friend.

Coconuts can become lethal missiles! Watch your head…

You can’t go to Bora Bora without having a Bloody Mary at Bloody Mary’s.

This delightful dish is actually french snails in garlic butter. I tried it, of course, however couldn’t manage the disconnect in my head from the ones in the garden to the ones on my plate. Try everything once and the fun things twice. This will remain a once in a life time experience for me!

Then there is the obligatory cocktail in a coconut. I took along some metal straws as the number of straws used can soon add up when on holiday.

I have to say this is one of my favourite beaches in all the world! I hope to return again soon.

The tropical waters are clear and warm and have an incredible range of blue colours to delight the eye.

This is such a refreshing blue water

I have never seen water before with such an intense blue. It took my breath away!

Spring starts in 41 days and it is far from the normal start to my usual growing seasons. I still have beds build and to fill, sort out my under glass growing solution, get a shed, sort out a reliable water source and so much more. So, I have come back from my break rearing to go.

I have a mountain of earth to move. It equates to 6 truckloads of good quality swamp-like soil from ‘up near Froggies’ near where we used to live. I feel confident it will be a fabulous growing medium for my new garden and it appears to be weed free. It has been hanging about for a couple of months now and nothing nasty has reared its head. This is always a great relief when taking delivery of soil from an unknown location.

From this angle it looks insurmountable. It is certainly a lot of earth.

The earth needs moving for a couple of reasons. The first obvious one is I need to fill beds so I can be ready for the spring. There are a lot of beds, so it should make a good dent in the mountain. However, I have only constructed half the beds I need and want, because of the mountain. The bulldozer can’t adequately manoeuvre around it to flatten out the last little bit of garden in the front corner and the mountain of earth is where I want to put my tool shed and so it clearly needs moving at some point, so I can construct a shed to store my tools.

However we have been chipping away at it from the other side.

I should have thought more about it when I had the soil delivered, but the places that I think would have been ideal now – being easy access for digging from and out of the way of everything we have going on now, would have been in the way for the delivery of the house or even more frustrating would have been right where the caravan was that we were living in at the time. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. At the time it seemed like a good spot.

Beds are being filled

The great thing about this soil and something I will fully appreciate in the summer is it seems to hold water very well. This is a quality my plants will enjoy and will assist my water tank to stretch across the long hot summer I am hoping for this season. When dry this soil is light, crumbly and can best be described as fluffy. When wet it is clay-like, sticky and very heavy. A few days in the sun and it goes back to fluffy with the lightest touch of the rake.

And things are being planted. Shallots went in yesterday.

But it is winter and in winter it rains… a lot! So I am trying to move a heavy, sticky mountain most days. It doesn’t make it fun. I have found after a day of rain – it makes good sense to wait until the sun has been on it a good few hours and then take the soil from the top and sides where it isn’t so claggy. It is slow going for me and in trying not to over exert myself I just do a few wheelbarrow loads at a time then go and do something else and come back to the garden a little later.

The pre-sprouted garlic has been in a week and is doing well.

I have also hijacked our lovely builders helper a couple of times. It is amazing how fast a strapping young lad can move dirt. Hubby the Un-Gardener has also been fulfilling his role to dig on demand, although the demands on his real job are often incompatible with my demands in the garden. All can hope for really is a whole bunch of magical fairies to come along in the night and work their magic. Say it with me “I believe in fairies, I believe in fairies.”

In the meantime I’ll continue to plod on and slowly and steadily, knowing out of sheer determination I will get there in the end.

I feel like I have bitten off more than I can chew, and my eyes are bigger than my stomach but I really want what I want, so I will work hard to get there. My garden is huge. Last time it was built up slowly over 10 years. This time I want it all done in 10 weeks. Actually I have longer than that but it sounds more dramatic that way.

I have to keep reminding myself what the garden looked like before I started so I can appreciate how far I’ve come.

Winter isn’t the best time to be doing all of this either – well it is because it is a behind the scenes kind of a season where nothing much is growing and if I pull it all off, I will meet my goal of being ready for the new season. I am desperate to meet this goal because buying vegetables is beginning to wear thin. I don’t mind buying onion, garlic and spuds when my crops run out… but to have to buy other simple easy to grow things that should be safely tucked up in my freezer or out in the garden to be pulled at my leisure like a fresh carrot…. To me I can see the benefits to growing, in taste, freshness and lack of plastic wrap very clearly and I’m keen to remove the cost of veggies from my weekly shop. This keeps me motivated, that and realising the vision in my head of the finished garden in full flourish – it will look magnificent.

I’ve only got six truckloads of dirt to shift…. how hard can that be?

The problem is winter is cold and wet and often times miserable and it is much more preferable to be wrapped up warm by the heater. It is easy to get down on myself for not achieving much on a daily basis. Fortunately I have installed a time lapse camera overlooking the garden and can see just how much I have achieved in as little as one month! I don’t feel so bad about it all now and I’m encouraged to carry on. Every little bit helps. I will get there in the end – determined and exhausted. But it will be well worth it.

Beds are being filled, visual progress is being made… we’ll get there in the end.

You can see for yourself just how far I’ve come by checking out my timelapse footage:

Come again soon – progress is being made and Rome wasn’t built in a day!

We recently headed on down to the local Fieldays event for farmers and rural types. I’ve been meaning to go for a decade. We’re rural types and with over a 1000 exhibitors and all things country it seemed like the perfect thing for us to do. It was a lovely day out, but my head was all about the garden, and my wallet – in spite of all the great deals, was intrinsically linked to the house and at this point is a finite resource to be guarded tightly. Fortunately, my heart was blinded to all the exciting possibilities found at many points along the crowded paths and bursting stalls.

Such an incredible event and the thing I came way with the most was the mud proof flooring! Funny the way your mind works from time to time!

However with the garden foremost in my head, the thing that drew my eye was the wood chips on the ground to mark out trade sites and keep down the mud in the paths. I kept wondering what they would be doing with it after the show – there must have been acres of it in nice thick layers. It turns out the event centre reuses it, shame. Now for me right now, picking up a truck load or two of preloved woodchip at a bargain basement price would be the deal of the century. Alas not to be.

But it did get me thinking about my garden paths. It is still a bit early to be making a decision but not too early to start thinking about it. What would be the ideal medium for the ground between the gardens. I put a post out on Facebook and Twitter to see what others used and what they thought.

At the moment the paths are a blank canvas. I did toy with the idea of leaving the sand, however in the height of summer it would be hot and the slightest breeze would kick it up into my face as I worked… so yeah… bad idea.

It basically came down to about four main options each with pros and cons. It was good to see what others thought, and added to my own experiences and I think I have come up with a decision. However I’m open to persuasion. So please let me know your thoughts. Here’s mine.

LAWN

I love the look of well mowed lawn between the beds. It is comfortable and cooling to sit on in the summer as I tend the beds and isn’t to difficult to set up – scatter seeds and wait. The last garden has grass all around and after a mow it looked stunning.

However, the new garden is about the same size as the last one and will introduce the same problems. Due to the MS, keeping it mowed was exhausting. I tried mowing in sections so I wouldn’t get exhausted, but then I never achieved that lovely well mown look all across the place. It often left me too stuffed to actually do the pottering about. I have tried getting others to help but they often did more harm than good as a trailing cucumber vine was mulched to a pulp, a hanging pea shoot became ensnared in the passing handle and ripped ruthlessly from the earth, among other things. Non gardeners just don’t get it.

While I love the look of grass paths, they take a bit of effort to keep looking nice.

Then there are the edges the mower can’t reach. I find a weed eater is a bit unwieldy in a tight spot and I got quickly fed up with the bit of plastic snapping off the strimmer line as it repeatedly hit the sides of the beds. I don’t want to add unnecessary plastic to my garden. I’ve had help in this area too in the past, resulting in a severe haircut for my poor onions! So I found the only way was up close and personal with shears. It was good in I was in regular connection with the garden, but it was extremely time consuming.

I do love a lawn but on an energy output scale Hubby the Un-Gardener has said no for my own good.

I could make the paths gravel like the platform the plumbers created for the water tanks. It does look kinda nice, but I’m not convinced it is the right thing for the garden.

STONES AND GRAVEL

I have written these off right from the start. I have experience here. In our very first garden when we didn’t know what we were doing, we put in a lovely white pebble garden with a few poor unfortunately plants to suffer in. We put down weed mat and then stones, but it didn’t take long before we lost control. The leaves blew in and landed among them, plants crept across from under the fence and in the end we had a lovely rich compost above the weed mat with nasty weeds thriving above with their roots piercing the pores in the mat making it next to impossible to pull up. Add to that the weight of the now invisible white stones that had sunk to the depths of the debris and clearing it all up (to make the house presentable for sale) was something I don’t care to repeat any time soon. Without the weed mat the gravel will quickly be lost in my sand and I’m not keen on weed mat at all so however lovely it looks on day one… It’s a no from me.

PAVERS

This would make it my dream garden. Maybe a lovely pattern and play on shapes, sizes and colours. It would be low maintenance, weed free and look fabulous. There is just one drawback. Cost. I priced it up. It would be over ten thousand dollars new! Eek. I think this will need to be a long term plan to source enough second hand ones for free or next to nothing and then one day when I have enough I could make it wonderful. Or I could learn to make pavers – but then there’d still be a cost… So that’s a no for now.

So that leaves

And the winner is…. wood chip – unless someone else has a bright Idea… I’m open to suggestions.

WOOD CHIPS

A lot of people use these. The common complaint seems to be the blackbirds make a mess of them and they break down quickly and need replacing often. I’m not worried about the birds – it would be contained within the outer walls of the beds. But the thing that sold me for now is the continuous break down of the chips themselves – I don’t see it so much as my paths being eroded, but my poor sandy soil that lies beneath the entire space will get a continual nutrient boost, not to mention the benefit it will bring to microbial communities in the garden. The paths will have more of a job than just covering the sand and being worked upon. They will be working just as hard as everything else.

Wood chips it is… now where to find several truck loads at a good price….

I am champing at the bit to start moving soil, so I can start planting out my winter crops. But I seem to have an inbuilt self-integrity mode that just won’t allow me to cut corners in the garden. I just can’t cheat on myself. A bulldozer is not for fine work – it’s not subtle. It does a great job of clearing the ground, but it won’t give a polished smooth surface. The ground is flat but there lumps and bumps in places. A lesser version of myself in a parallel universe would say it is flat enough and carry on with the next stage.

And I thought string lines were overrated… little did I know.

But as I stand at the bottom of the garden and gaze across I can see it is a tad wonky. My last garden was wonderfully wonky, and I embraced that. It evolved over time and beds were thrown together with varying techniques and a she’ll be right attitude. This garden is different. It is my dream garden and it would bother me for the rest of my days if it was out of kilter. I have time and opportunity and it is only my desire to get to the next stage that stands between me and a nicely laid out garden.

Ok I knew these were wonky – they were on the edge of what the bulldozer could sort out without banging into my dirt pile, but knowing how to use the string line means I’m not worried about how on earth I was going to get them straight!

Our amazing builder watched me with amusement as I juggled a level and 1 metre lengths of wood and couldn’t bear it anymore so showed me how to use the string line. I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it again – knowledge is power, and I had a huge ‘aha’ moment. Oh, so that is how it works.

An audience of chickens watching my every move. Actually they hardly noticed – I was more of a inconvenience in their way!

The garden has a gentle slope that runs down to the house and if it was to be completely flat the bulldozer would have had to move mountains more earth for little gain. The slope is very minor and gives character. So, the string line was tied to a couple of rebar poles and pulled tightly at the top and bottom of the garden across 3 beds, and down one side. Any bits sticking out in a wonky fashion was adjusted back into line with a tap of my boot. And when all adjusting was done it was moved to the other side of the bed and levelling was repeated.

The shovel is the perfect tool to bring wayward beds into alignment.

But there is more to a string line… it can check the other dimension and while the sides of the garden line up beautifully the tops seemed to go up and down like the hind leg on a donkey. I hadn’t really noticed it in some of the beds, but others were blatantly obvious, and I knew tweaking was needed.

The wooden blocks made easy work of compacting the sand beneath the beds.

This is where having sand is such a blessing – it is the material used to level off paving stones etc and I have it in abundance. The other blessing is it is winter, and it has been raining… a lot. So, the sand is damp and compacts well. In the height of summer, it would be a completely different story. It would be light, free draining and blow about the place and certainly wouldn’t stay put.

Quality control is approved by Peaches the Chicken… the beds are level!

Using the shovel, I gently levered the bottom of the bed on the side that needed lifting a little and then packed some sand underneath until the bed looked level against the string line. Then I removed the shovel and continued to poke soil under the bed with my fingers – I’m a hands on gardener for sure. Then I grabbed a couple of blocks of wood from the off-cut pile from the building project and used them kind of like a couple of mini bulldozers to ram sand into the gaps and soft spots and compact them as hard as I could. I soon found an easy rhythm and the garden started to look even better than I first thought. I quickly worked my way through the first half of the half of the garden I had already built.

Ahhh that looks so much better! : o)

It won’t take more than a jiffy to finish off the rest and then I can begin the fun part. Well it seems like it will be fun from the starting point. Ask me again after I’ve filled three beds! So, the great lesson to be had here is ‘do it once – do it right.’ I won’t regret the time taken to do this extra step.

Come again soon – there is loads going on (get it – loads and loads of dirt!)

Sometimes life sweeps you away with what you are doing and you barely notice the passing of time. That was how this June has been so far. A hive of activity with the days disappearing into a blur. I am not entirely sure how we have found ourselves one third of the way through this month. The weather was magnificent and the garden called to me. The work, while involved heavy lifting, was fun and easy.

I’m really pleased with what I have done so far. (The short planks are just to make sure the pathways and beds are the right width.)

Half of the garden has been put together and I’m happy with that. I have arranged my crop rotation and planting plan so the winter crops are on this side of the garden. Which means I can get on with filling the garden with earth and planting out my onion and garlic, all going well, on the shortest day.

The other side of the garden still needs a little ground work.

The other half of the garden is still not level and the bulldozer needs to do more work. The problem is the large pile of earth is in the wrong place, but how was I to know that all those weeks ago when the garden was just a dream?! So I need to burst a foo foo valve moving as much as I can, into the new beds. Then the bulldozer can come back and level out the rest of the garden and bed building can recommence.

The early garlic looks like it is desperate to be planted out… I really need to move some earth.

In the meantime I will most likely be out there – rain or shine, moving a mountain.

Come again soon – progress is being made.

Sarah the Gardener : o)

Oh and… this week I am starting a new thing I’ve been thinking about doing for a while now, but have only just got around to. I’m voice recording my blog so you can listen along instead of reading it. You can check this out here:

Nature abhors bare earth and who am I to argue with that. So not long after the bulldozer finished bulldozing I set to work laying out my garden. It is such a momentous thing. I have been dreaming about it for months and months. Fortunately, the vision in my head is flexible as it has needed to morph into something else a couple of times. But it is still there and essentially it is still in line with my initial imaginings when I first laid eyes on the place and agreed to let Hubby the Un-Gardener drag me away from my old garden.

After I defined the boundaries I could see what I was working with…

Once the site was cleared of grass to a point determined to be clean sand, I grabbed a tape measure and took stock of my space. I think this is why I need glasses. I thought the plot was short and wide, but it turns out, it is long and narrow-ish. Goodness me, how do I get on in life? This meant a quick trip back to the drawing board to rejig my plan. The plan I had held dear for a month or so as the ideal way it should be.

I attempted to start again from scratch, but I couldn’t tear myself away from what I had already decided. So, I just did a bit of tweaking and massaging and some shuffling and it all fell into place without changing the essence of the original design. Armed with a fresh print out of the garden, I grabbed some string and some stakes and attempted to mark it all out.

It turns our the old plan wasn’t going to fit in the space I had. Back to the drawing board!

It turns out string lines aren’t my forte either. I had no way of guaranteeing they were at exact right angles and with maths not a strong point, couldn’t seem to figure it out. With the project as big as it was any error would be extrapolated out into disaster. It didn’t take long to abandon the string. I did have a large metal set square thing which was a little help but could only go so far.

There was only one thing for it… to lug all the wood over to the garden and lay it down where it was destined to be. That way I can see it all for myself and do any shuffling required. I started by laying out the outside edge, followed by several across the middle to make sure it would all fit. But the lack of surety that it was straight and square really bothered me.

I don’t even think this string line is straight, but how can you tell?

So, I started again, grabbed the string again and put a line across the base of the garden and begun to layout the front row. The lack of an anchor point – something to measure off, still bothered me. I looked up and stretched my aching muscles from all the unnecessary lumber lugging and I saw my answer. The house!

Now this line is true, because I measured it off the house.

All I needed to do was to measure the distance from the house, across the soon to be lawn, to the edge of the garden. The house was laid straight in the landscape as determined by surveyors and engineers at great cost. So piggy backing off their work would ensure my garden would be straight too! I used this measurement to create a string line I knew I could trust and laid the front ends of the first row of beds with confidence.

I accidentally discovered the planks locked together when laid out in a certain order. making it easy to line it all up.

Then using the large metal set square, I laid the first sides. I wanted the gap between the beds to also be uniform and measured my cart to make sure it was wide enough – and some. I bent down between the beds and pretended to garden to ensure it would be comfortable for long periods of gardening business. So, using the beds themselves and the spacer board I began laying it all out.

There is nothing like looking back on a hard days work and seeing all you have achieved.

I was excited to discover that if I laid it all out in a certain way the boards could be locked together and adjusted with the gentle tap of a hammer. There wasn’t a lot of movement at all and I felt confident there was little or no extrapolated drift from the original string line. It isn’t very conventional, but when have I ever been one to follow instructions. Proper builders may be horrified at my techniques, but they work for me.

Seeing it all laid out fills my heart with joy. All I need to do now is join them together and fill them with earth and plant them out. Simple aye?!

It is always the way – you just get to sink your teeth into an exciting project and something comes along and throws a spanner in the works. We had a productive couple of days with the bulldozer sorting out my land. Gone are the undulating lumps and bumps. All but the merest hint of Kikuyu grass is gone and the base for my garden is clean sand. Which is manageable at this point. I just need to come up with a system to stop the inward grass encroachment from around the edges.

Nothing like a spot of kitchen gardening on a wet and wild day.

It was going so well and then we had an event that I think will be just part of our new normal. There was another storm. Nothing like that horrible one when the house was up on jacks, but still bad enough to have me up all night listening to the wind whistle through holes and gaps in the house that at that stage still hadn’t been repaired. By my count this will have been the 6th storm since we moved here on the 19th January. The only consolation is these storms aren’t isolated to our property and large swathes of the country are also experiencing traumatic weather events. It isn’t me, it is you too!

Sometimes it is best to appreciate the wonder of nature of the warmth and comfort of indoors!

The wind is pretty wild and the ocean is as marbled as an expensive piece of wagu beef. Sitting in the dark in the middle of the night watching the sky light up with a dramatic electrical storm out to sea, framed perfectly through the bay window, is no longer terrifying – it is spectacular! Even in the worst weather I still love living here. It makes you feel so alive. However, it isn’t that conducive to getting things done outside. The building work has loosened a lot of the land and exposed the sand (aside from my project which doesn’t count in this as it is my sand with a noble purpose) and once you get the wind behind that, it is like a brutal exfoliant or a sharp sand blast. It is much better to just stay inside.

These fennel seedlings will be some of the first plants in my new garden

The problem with this is, I really want to push things forward and get things done. I’m done with waiting. I’ve done my time and 120 days is my limit. Then I remembered my seedlings, sown back in the beginning of April. In their short lives they have moved several times and been through a couple of good storms, and still looked good. They were certainly strong little plants, but the time had come to move them out of the seed raising mix and into bigger pots and a good quality potting mix.

Even in bad weather a storm whipped ocean can still look beautiful.

But it was yucky outside and while the sun was shining, out of nowhere an intense rain burst would come up from the beach and then disappear as quickly as it came yet left everything freezing cold and soaking wet. Then I remembered – it isn’t so much that we have a building site in our home, we are living in a building site. The builder had set up his saw bench in living room. The electrician was working on the fuse box in a sea of wire clippings. So, if they could turn the house in to work space, then so could I and set myself up in the kitchen.

It was a very productive morning, now I just need to keep these guys alive and well for another few weeks!

As I scooped the soil into the pots I began to daydream a little. All of these little seedlings will end their lives in the big garden. It is so close I can almost feel it. But at the same time there is a lot to be done to get there. The first step is to lose time in a wild afternoon in a kitchen with a light layer of sawdust dusting the surfaces and digging into the rich soil as I repot tiny plants loaded with an incredible future. Life is good.

Come again soon – there is some heaving lifting in my immediate future.

Sarah the Gardener : o)

* Exciting news: a lovely range of amazing Gardena Hand Tools will be available in NZ from 25 June 2018.